Thanks again for taking your time to answer the questions here. 1.Do you react to any of the usual woods like cocobolo or ebony, and what do you do to mitigate it?2.Do you prefer wrapped or wrapless cues for your player, and what wrap do you prefer?

Pete working in a logging town did you pick up any tips on wood that helped you in your cue making? Not from the wood its self but designing and building machinery for the lumber industry gave me a good background for building machinery for building cues.

As a machinist what was the hardest aspect of making cues for you to pick up? To loosen the tolerance up so there would be room for glue

What did you do with that first cue you made with the prather blank? I still have it.

As a cue maker now what has been the biggest hurdle for you to overcome in the cue making process? To be able to sell cues out side of my local area

What did you do with the first dozen or so cues you made when you were just starting out??? They were all sold to local players and some of them still play with them weekly Jim <---Nosey[/color][/b][/quote]

Thanks again for taking your time to answer the questions here. 1.Do you react to any of the usual woods like cocobolo or ebony, and what do you do to mitigate it?2.Do you prefer wrapped or wrapless cues for your player, and what wrap do you prefer?

Have a great summer, Patrick

1) Maple bothers me the most and the dust from Desert Ironwood is horable. We have a cyclone dust system plumed to all the equipment in the shop and we try to wear dust masks when sanding.

2)I prefer to play with a wrapped cue and my favorite wrap to play with is lizard. If I am building a fancy cue I prefer to do it wrapless as it give you a lot more room to be creative.

Do you do repair work? I use to do repair work but as the work load to build cues has increased I have stoped taking in repair work and inlay work for other cue makers. We have also quit building tooling and fixtures for other cue makers

If so, is it more challenging than building cues? I did not find it more challenging more of a pain in the ass. When you have your equipment set up to run certain parts and you have to tear down the set up to do the reair job and than reset up to run parts. When it is all said and done I find that it is not worth it to me to take in repair work. There are some great repair men out there that make a living doing repair work so I like to send customers to them.

What is your outlook on the future of building cues...not just for yourself, but the overall industry as well? I feel that the future of cue building is very good. The cuemakers that build a quality product at a fair price point will always have as much work as they want.

Would you recommend it as a career to anyone? If someone wants to get in to building cues for the money I would say don't do it. If they want to get in to it for the love of cues and the art of building cues I would tell them it is a very rewarding.

What advice would you share with them before they took the plunge? Go to a trade school and take some machine shop classes. Don't ask how to do everything on cue forums take the time and learn to build cues on your own you have to fail a little to progress. And don't have the nerve to call your self a cuemaker just tell people you build cues in tell established cuemakers call you a cuemaker. To me this was one of the biggest rewards for me it like earning your right of passage to being a cuemaker.-Patrick

don't have the nerve to call your self a cuemaker just tell people you build cues in tell established cuemakers call you a cuemaker. To me this was one of the biggest rewards for me it like earning your right of passage to being a cuemaker.[/color]

WOW this is one of the best quotes I've read, it seems like a lot of the new guys are in such a hurry to tell people they are a cuemaker, it often puzzled me because I would wonder why you'd want a title that you didn't earn and one that you obviously don't respect if you think you achieved it so quickly.

In any event it's a wrap (lizard).

Thank you Mr. Tonkin for giving us a peak inside of your shop and into your mind.

I've stated many times that I felt your work has been on par with some of the top guys in the industry and I feel like you've done this in a short period of time, congrats on that and I hope to work on a project with you some day soon. I hope this Q&A opens the eyes of some people who might not have known the name Tonkin before this, I also hope it generates some orders.I can promise people that they will not be let down.

Jim <----Thanks again Pete

_________________ I am in a very very small group of people that can buy any cue they want that can make that statement.Congrats,Nick Serdula

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